Summer Heat
by Monna Sakura
Summary: A short little gift fic. This is semiKakairu and only semi because they're kids in this and thus not relationship material. If you must title it, it's shonen ai.


This was written in under an hour and is essentially unbetaed. Please be forgiving.

Disclaimer: It's too hot to pretend I own anything. No joke. This is one of those days that I wish I were a guy just so I could take my thrice damned shirt off. Stupid genetics.

Summer Heat

Iruka flomped back on the floor, sweating like a fiend and just plain feeling out and out miserable. 'Darn this heat!' he thought to himself. 'Who the heck decided that days like this had to be both scorching _and_ muggy! Dangit!'

He lay still on the hard floor until the temperature of the space under his body equalized. With a groan, he rolled over to a new section of floor, relieved when it was only two degrees above boiling instead his body's twenty-three. And he hardly thought of that as an exaggeration.

Iruka spent the next hour or so rolling around the living room floor, trying to find some reprieve from the sweltering heat. It wasn't until the entire floor was leeched of every last bit of chill that a thought struck him. Didn't his parent used to keep an electric fan somewhere around the house? Iruka screwed up his face and thought for a minute. Yes, he definitely remembered a fan, but he hadn't seen it in ages, even before his parents died. Then again, this was the first real cooker of a summer they'd had in a while, he reasoned. So maybe it was still around.

Hope soared and Iruka pushed himself to his feet, unconsciously exaggerating the effort of the movement for an imaginary audience. With as much vigor as he could muster in the heavy humidity, Iruka wandered through the empty house, searching through seldom used closets and the boxes his parents things were stuffed into. Once, when he peeked into a particularly dusty box, he'd yelped and had to scramble for a shoe in order to get rid of a small, antennaed problem that had suddenly popped up at him.

After he'd finished _cautiously_ searching the rest of the house and turned up no objects of electric-powered windy bliss -ah, well, a boy can hope-, Iruka dejectedly dragged himself out to the porch in search of some fresh air and shade. After discarding the idea of holing up under the porch -there were _spiders_ down there!- he heaved an overly frustrated sigh and plopped down on a step to mope. At least if he burned to a crisp, he wouldn't have to go to Tsuba-sensei's lecture on chakra theory.

And there he remained, melting into a puddle of goo on his porch until mid-afternoon when his moping was interrupted by couple of loudly arguing voices. Curiosity piqued, Iruka strained his ears to tell who the voices belonged to. One, he recognized straight away; there was only one kid he knew of who said things like 'beautiful flowery sunny day' and 'eternal rival who is mine to smite!' and didn't get beat up every day. 'Okay, so it's Gai-sempai and...' The blank was quickly filled as the arguing pair came into sight.

Kakashi Hatake stalked down the sidewalk, turning every few feet to shout obscenities at his friend and 'eternal rival'. Gai matched his insults word for word, even going so far as to hit Kakashi in the back of the head to drive his point home.

Iruka grinned, amused at the resulting tussle on the pavement. He laughed outright when Gai rolled to the side and right onto a wad of gum Iruka distinctly remembered spitting out the day before.

"Eeeeeew!" Gai leapt to his feet, pushing Kakashi away and tugging at the vibrant green material of his shirt that was now decorated with a big, sticky pink glob. "Now my beautiful new shirt is all gummy!"

"Good," Kakashi laughed through his mask, "At least no one else will have to be subject to that hideous thing!"

Gai wasn't listening, opting instead to run back the way he'd come with a litany of gum-removing techniques following him, "Peanut butter? Will that work! NO! ICE! YES, ICE WILL WORK!"

Kakashi shook his head and removed his mask, wiping sweat from his face with the back of a hand. Iruka choose that moment to comment. "Why do you hang out with that weirdo, sempai?"

Kakashi scowled at the young boy who had the audacity to actually speak to the great prodigy of Konohagakure without so much as an introduction. "None of your business, brat. Watch your tongue when you talk about my friends if you wanna keep it."

Iruka mock shivered, "Oooh, I'm so scared. Not." At Kakashi's deepened scowl, he laughed again. "What, you expect me cower at the feet of a kid less than two years older than me? Geez, you've got to be the dumbest genius I've ever met."

"And you've got to be the most annoying little brat _I've_ ever met!" Kakashi shot back.

"At least there's a light on in my attic. You--" Iruka froze in realization. "Oh, right! I forgot about the attic! Great!" Ignoring Kakashi, Iruka hopped up and and ran back into the house, slamming the door behind him.

Kakashi stood on the sidewalk, staring at the door. "What a weird kid." He turned and walked away, still muttering about nutso kids.

Inside the house, Iruka ran into the kitchen and dragged one of the chairs into the entrance hallway. Situating it below a small trapdoor, he jumped on and pulled the door open, sneezing as the dust that fell out attacked his nose. He waved a hand in front of his face to clear the air and clambered up into the dark attic.

--Half an hour later--

Kakashi walked back along the sidewalk, having forgotten something at Gai's house. Suddenly he heard the strangest sound his ears had even paid witness to. It was some kind of... mechanized voice. And it was making a sort of 'Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' sound. What the hell? He looked around for the source of the sound and let his eyes fall on the boy from earlier, back on his porch. Only this time, he was accompanied by an extension cord and was laying on his stomach in front of an electric fan. And he was humming open mouthed into the face of said fan. DOUBLE What the hell?

"_What_ are you _doing_?" The boy turned to look at him and grinned.

"I'm cooling off, of course." Kakashi just nodded, deciding he did _not_ want to know. That fan was really beginning to look inviting, though...

"It _is_ awfully hot today."

"Yeah, it is." The boy faced the fan again. "My name's Iruka. And I know who you are."

"I figured." The artificial breeze mussing up the boy-- er, Iruka's hair seemed to mock him. Suddenly, Kakashi's dark blue clothes felt way too hot.

"You've got to be dying in that long sleeved shirt." Well, Iruka sure was observant. But then, the yearning look Kakashi was staring at the fan with didn't really take a jounin to notice.

"Yeah," Kakashi replied, uncomfortably aware that even that intentionally nonchalant

reply made him sound like he was begging.

Iruka looked at him again. "You can share the fan if you want."

Kakashi not-quite ran up the steps, "Ok." He lay on his stomach next to Iruka, reveling in the fake wind. He opened his mouth to say that he guessed Iruka wasn't such an annoying brat after all, but paused when his voice came out sounding like a robot. He turned his head to look at Iruka who stared back at him. They cracked near identical grins. The rest of the afternoon was spent talking into the fan and laughing.

Okay, maybe I should apologize…. --;


End file.
